July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa • Hacker News Board

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#211

Post by Retric » Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 1:34 PM UTC

nilved wrote: post #195

Retric wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The least safe new car in 2016 is vastly safer than the absolute best car produced in 1980. Remember, seat belts are a direct result of regulation mostly from US airforce testing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stapp

That doesn't matter unless you're arguing that it wouldn't have happened without a government and regulation. Most of the responsibilities of a government would be better handled and implemented by the private sector.

The first seat belt was invented over 20 years before air force testing, they went into common use directly because of studies on rapid deceleration and mandates for adoption. It's hard to credit that with any other cause.

Consider, you might think break inspections would be completely unnecessary because who would drive a car without breaks. However, in states without annual inspections have accidents related to this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit...

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#212

Post by jmcmichael » Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 1:36 PM UTC

nilved wrote: post #160

pjc50 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. You can change the carbon efficiency of people's consumption quite a bit with appropriate nudging and consumption taxes. You can also have global agreements paying countries not to exploit their "unburnable" fossil fuel resources. Little things like the EU mandate for ending incandescent lightbulbs can definitely add up. You need technology and policy and economics. The market for power plants is never go…

> Yes and no. You can change the carbon efficiency of people's consumption quite a bit with appropriate nudging and consumption taxes. You can also have global agreements paying countries not to exploit their "unburnable" fossil fuel resources. No, you really can't, or we wouldn't have year-after-year record breaking temperatures. Regulation has never fixed anything. And especially when it comes to science, we need t…

> Regulation has never fixed anything.

...

> And especially when it comes to science, we need to remember that innovation and regulation are opposite ends of the same spectrum.

So, regulation has never protected us from the negative externalities of a scientific discovery destructively applied by the market or state? Remember, the state is also subject to regulations - the same free market that fuels your utopian free-market fundamentalist pipe-dreams is protected and sustained by regulation.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#213

Post by dasboth » Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

blahi wrote: post #162

dasboth wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely true, it's rare to see a fully civilised discussion where those concerns are addressed without the accompanying rhetoric. Having said that, surely it's a fact that we'll run out of fossil fuels at some point and will need an alternate source of energy, and that will be expensive no matter when we do it, so why not start early?

You don't seem to grasp what I am saying at all. I am not against upgrading our energy capabilities. This whole comment chain started because of the claim that only lizard people have incentive to lie. This couldn't be further from the truth. There are snake people who lie, scream and spread FUD who just want to take the lizards' place. Their screaming leads to a lot of tension and escalation. THIS IS A PROBLEM. SOLV…

I agree about unproductive rhetoric, and my question wasn't aimed at you specifically, I was just wondering out loud about the opposite viewpoint. The focus of the climate discussion in general should definitely be more towards the points you raised, I'm just curious about people who don't think it's even a discussion worth having.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#214

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

blahi wrote: post #208

collyw wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scientific consensus is that it is probably man made.

The scientific community could not possibly hope to have a definite answer to that. Hard liners on "man-made" climate change are sponsored through various channels just like hard-liners on no climate change at all. I am no ecologist, but I know my statistics, math and logic. From what I've read on the subject, claims that it is man-made are based on assumptions which don't hold and huge jumps in logic and conclusions…

The claims that climate change is likely mostly man made are based on a combination of well-established physics and chemistry as well as observations of how climate change correlates with the various conditions which are theorized to drive it, which gives a pretty clear idea of the direct contributions, and we have very good ideas of the root causes of those direct contributions, at least to the extent of which ones are largely the result of human activity (e.g., atmospheric CO2) and which are not (e.g., variations in solar conditions.)

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#215

Post by wahsd » Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

harryh wrote: post #44

Personally I think that the idea that these trends can ever be revered by some sort of world wide agreement to lower consumption is a pipe dream. People want to eat meat and drive cars and fly on airplanes. As long as they're rich enough to do so you'll never stop them. The only solution to this problem is technology. Some combination of green energy sources plus probably very large scale terraforming.

I know, let's make the rest of the world just as aspiriational and let's also import people from places where they had little environmental impact right into societies where they can have far greater impact, and then let's let them keep making more of them with abandon, especially in the third world where they then emerge to overrun the civilized world from because they reproduce at far than sustainable, let alone carrying capacity rates.

The problem is clear, the solution is clear, yet the vast majority of people don't have the will to even just face the only solution. You simply can't rationally claim to want to do something about climate change and global warming on the premise that it's negative and needs "fixing", without talking about population control of poorly educated, low qualification people. Anything and everything else but qualitatively weighted population control is simply delaying disaster (if that is the premise you are operating on). We need to stop "saving" every child and person in the third world just so they can reproduce with abandon. For example, Nigeria is projected to reach 1 BILLION people by 2050. They can barely sustain themselves at the current 140 Million, you cannot consider yourself a rational or intelligent person if you think they will be able to do so at 1 BILLION.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#216

Post by caseysoftware » Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #189

nilved wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes and no. You can change the carbon efficiency of people's consumption quite a bit with appropriate nudging and consumption taxes. You can also have global agreements paying countries not to exploit their "unburnable" fossil fuel resources. No, you really can't, or we wouldn't have year-after-year record breaking temperatures. Regulation has never fixed anything. And especially when it comes to science, we need t…

If you reduce net CO2 production by 90% you still get record temperatures year after year, but the rate of increase is dramatically smaller.

You mean "If you reduce CO2 production by 90% by humans"

The analysis that I'm waiting to see is "of the global CO2 production each year, how much of it is due to humans?"

If we contribute 90% of CO2 production, then reducing it may change things.

If we contribute 10% of CO2 production, then even reducing our portion to zero, the overall change is near-negligible.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#217

Post by davidy123 » Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

davidy123 wrote: post #82

goodcanadian wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe this, wouldn't the ethical thing be to not have kids? I see this over and over . . . If you don't have kids, who exactly are you saving the world for?

> I see this over and over . . . If you don't have kids, who exactly are you saving the world for? The billions of people (including kids) who already exist. Whether through adoption or supporting better general social programs. Clearly if that were the focus and the way humans thought the world would be a better place. But of course it's wishful thinking and people have every right to have and enjoy their own childr…

Holy downvoting. Why?

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#218

Post by CalRobert » Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #194

harryh wrote: post #44

Personally I think that the idea that these trends can ever be revered by some sort of world wide agreement to lower consumption is a pipe dream. People want to eat meat and drive cars and fly on airplanes. As long as they're rich enough to do so you'll never stop them. The only solution to this problem is technology. Some combination of green energy sources plus probably very large scale terraforming.

Live in a multi-unit building in a city where you can commute and do errands by walking or cycling (electric bikes are fine and get around that whole pedaling bit). Source your energy renewably and use little of it (80-300kwh per month isn't crazy depending on your climate). Don't buy much stuff. Eat very little meat. I mean, it doesn't take it to 0 but even if you DO want a comfortable life it doesn't mean living in…

There is a sad counterpoint, though, and one I think of often.

There are discretionary purchasers of fossil fuels - people/companies who would buy units of fuel but aren't because it's not cheap enough. All of the actions I named above reduce the demand for fossil fuels (by an infinitesimal amount, but still). Reducing demand reduces the price such that some other user will consume those fuels anyway. In this case it might as well be me, as a self-interested economic actor.

This is the idea behind putting a cap on emissions and selling the right to emit, but so far such schemes are a failure. And as much as I hate to admit it, they really do need to be global in scale - if cap and trade just results in more stuff being manufactured in nations that don't limit emissions, we haven't really fixed anything.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#219

Post by CalRobert » Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 1:38 PM UTC

goodmachine wrote: post #204

harryh wrote: post #44

Personally I think that the idea that these trends can ever be revered by some sort of world wide agreement to lower consumption is a pipe dream. People want to eat meat and drive cars and fly on airplanes. As long as they're rich enough to do so you'll never stop them. The only solution to this problem is technology. Some combination of green energy sources plus probably very large scale terraforming.

Regarding terraforming, I suggest a quick win may be to trigger a volcanic super-eruption. The cooling effect is known to reduce global temperatures to refreshing and/or bracing levels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter I was leaning towards using nuclear weapons to kick things off, but the potential side effects of such an event will probably be tricky enough, without the giant dust clouds soon to enshro…

Well, the nuclear weapons could remove most of the carbon emitters, but that's morally challenging.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#220

Post by knz » Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 1:39 PM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #144

s_q_b wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear, nuclear, nuclear. I've said this before, and the same climate scientists who first discovered anthropogenic global warming agree, that nuclear fission plants are the only technology that can bridge the gap between fossil fuels and fusion.

Wind and Solar are now cost-competetive with nuclear, without its nasty side effects. And the cost of storage for nuclear waste has not really been calculated yet.

Isn't another benefit of wind and solar the fact that it's distributed rather than concentrated into a few locations? Between the increase in frequency and severity of storms associated with climate change and the threat of terrorism/accidents, I would think the distributed nature of renewables would be a consideration even if nuclear remains a key part of the national grid.